


I Is For Incomplete

by SK_Kasai



Series: The A-Z of One Lucifer Morningstar [9]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Demons Are Assholes, F/M, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, Post-Season/Series 04, Whump, no happy ending, semi-happy ending?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23481316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SK_Kasai/pseuds/SK_Kasai
Summary: “ENOUGH!”“H-how do you… feel… without her?”Clearly, he had grown soft. His torture was not being as effective and that was something that Lucifer was going to remedy instantly.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Series: The A-Z of One Lucifer Morningstar [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654774
Comments: 35
Kudos: 240





	I Is For Incomplete

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Hope you're safe and well!
> 
> So, it's been exactly a month today ever since I started posting stuff here. I hope I've managed to make a few you people happy at the very least. Thank you for everything!
> 
> This one is ANGSTY I think. Sorry.

Contrary to popular belief, hell was cold.

As a matter of fact, hell was _freezing._

Lucifer had always found the cold a far more superior torture technique in comparison to heat. Back during his first days in the kingdom of suffering, he’d bitterly wonder if his father designed this place just to torture him first and foremost. He was a being of fire and light, banished to a land of cold and darkness and endless pain. He’d long since given up on the hope that any member of his family cared much less actually loved him.

Nobody loved him though. That was a fact. Nobody could love the devil. Nobody could love a monster like him, a pathetic excuse of a creature, a-

She did though.

_DO NOT THINK ABOUT HER!_

His hand moved out of its own accord, finding the pillar that was to his side and punching it clean in half.

It didn’t hurt in the slightest.

Lucifer seethed, clenching his jaw.

Pain was good. Physical pain was _good._ He was not a masochist per se, but he was no stranger to the soothing effect of physical pain, to how it numbed the pain of the heart and the emptiness residing deep within his soul.

Now that emotional pain?

That was his Father’s most sadistic of creations.

Lucifer reckoned that his Father must be laughing His holy ass off by now. Here he was, back in hell out of his “Own Free Will” away from his home and from the one woman who-

_DO NOT THINK ABOUT HER!_

A cry of unadulterated rage and agony tore itself from his lips. Fury coursed through his systems, lighting every cell in his body on fire. His eyes glowed red, beacons in the ominous darkness around him. His wings erupted from his back, the covets already sharper than the sharpest of blades.

He screamed.

His throat was being torn apart.

To his own ears, his scream seemed unique in the cacophony of sounds made by souls being tortured in their own hell loops for all of eternity around him. It made sense. The King of Hell doubted that any creature, dead or alive, could ever understand the wounds festering in his heart.

He lashed out, punching and kicking and slicing with his wings.

It didn’t hurt of course. Not the king of balm-like hurt any ways. If anything, it made the beast growling within the dark confines of his soul angrier and stronger.

He attacked the pillars and the walls for a long time. He kept going until he registered salt on his lips and a burning sensation at the corner of his eyes.

Lucifer paused.

Thus was hell. Weakness was not allowed. He was weak but the demons had no need to know that.

Another mighty cry and he was soaring through the ashes, wings flapping, aching with the freezing air. No one needed to see. No one needed to know.

Hell was cold and sometimes, Lucifer wondered if that was because his Father was torturing him or perhaps because he was torturing himself.

He didn’t ponder on it long though. After all, he deserved the pain. The source seemed inconsequential in the light of that “breakthrough”.

Lucifer doubted that Doctor Linda would have been proud.

**_*cries in Deckerstar*_ **

He finally had his fix of physical suffering.

Lucifer lay on the ground, somewhere isolated, watching ashes swirling overhead and trying his absolute hardest to ignore the constant screams all around him. During his latest vacation, he’d almost dared to forget how maddening the constant auditory stimulation in the form of screams was.

Ha.

His wounds ached.

A long time ago, Maze would have called him out on being stupid, sat him down, and taken care of them for him. But Maze wasn’t with him. It was almost ironic. Just when he started to believe that there were people who wouldn’t leave him… Just when they’d began to prove it to his traitorous mind and his suspicious heart, he’d had to leave them behind. It was just the type of sadistic torture that His Father would indulge in.

Lucifer wondered about what he’d done wrong.

He brought his shaking fingers to the large gash on his stomach, poking it. The pain radiated from the jagged injury in waves. In the presence of demon steel he didn’t need her-

_DO NOT THINK ABOUT HER!_

He focused on the agony instead. It was oddly calming. Lucifer could feel himself slipping away from sanity. Back when he had first fallen, he remembered spending what felt like centuries staring into space, lost in dark thoughts and emotions too painful to try and process and yet too powerful to try and lock away.

He’d snap out of it though. Always.

He’d go back to sauntering around. He’d… he’d go topside and he’d wear the best of clothes (which would soon come off of course as he indulged in a countless parade of “lovers”… he was already fallen, already tainted and ruined and all things ugly. Who cared?)

He’d grin and joke and take great joy in causing all manners of chaos. Harmless fun though. Always. He was not a creature who enjoyed causing pain after all.

Perhaps his life would have been easier if that were the case.

Amenadiel would come and drag him downstairs again. The devil was evil. Evil belonged in hell; creation’s fanciest dumpster. He’d fight his brother or he’d goad him. He’d annoy him and tease him and prove to him over and over and over again how unaffected he was by the turn life had taken.

Somehow, Lucifer doubted that that would be the case this time around. 

His fingers dug into the wound and he hissed. He laughed afterwards though. Loud and boisterous, echoing in the emptiness surrounding him.

He was already on his third assassination attempt. Hell was in disarray. He’d had to start over. Whipping out his devil visage could only do so much. Demons needed more than his devil form and a deep voice to be controlled.

He needed to remind them who the king of hell was.

He’d started with publicly executing the demons that had gone to LA and possessed all those humans after a lengthy torture-fest that had him wondering if he’d really grown as soft as Maze had often complained.

Then, the wars and the rebellions and the bloody assassination attempts and-

Lucifer heard something. Someone was moving. Approaching him.

He closed his eyes, wishing that he could sink into the ground and disappear into the bowels of hell. Were they his newest assassins? Why couldn’t all living things leave him alone to suffer in peace?

A knife was at his throat.

Somewhere in his mind, Lucifer wished that he would stay still. Allow the knife to go in and make everything… stop. Where would he go though? There was no way out. Too bad he’d tossed out Azrael’s blade into that tear in the universe after his mum.

The drawbacks of immortality.

_"Immortality. Mm. Of course. Do you spell that with one or two m's? I always forget."_

He almost heard their breaths.

Lucifer didn’t even open his eyes. The hot demons blood splattered his wings and his suit. It was the same suit he’d been wearing when-

_Do not. Do not. Do not._

Carnage surrounded him.

He’d need some new clothes of course. His favourite suits were not available and this one would not do any more.

Lucifer sighed heavily. Who knew that the smallest thing about his life in LA would torture him this much as well?

He missed his suits. His piano. His drinks. 

He missed food and coffee and driving around in his Corvette. 

Occasionally, he’d try and focus on these, hoping that they would distract him from the people he missed.

_DO NOT THINK ABOUT HER!_

He failed of course. Every single time.

Hell was really the home of the damned. He was the most damned creature to ever exist; created just for the sake of being damned.

Perhaps the clear message was that LA had never been home. Not for a devil like him anyway.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

  
Time had never made sense to Lucifer before. In hell, there was no sun and no moon and no alarm clocks or-

_DO NOT THINK ABOUT HER!_

Lucifer took a shuddering breath through his nose, scolding himself. Why did his thoughts always circle back to-

It wasn’t fair.

He descended, flying down to the pit, mind oddly empty and face eerily blank.

“Have you come to visit, my king?”

Lucifer’s eye twitched. Hatred rose in his chest. Anger brewed just beneath the surface, making his fingers itch for delivering a well-deserved punishment. He always holds onto the platitude of negative emotions, preferring them to the numbness and the cold.

Satan landed gracefully. Eons of stewing in this kingdom had almost desensitized his nose to the horrid smells brought upon by torture. The blood, the reek, the tinge of innards and sweat and steel in the air… He doesn’t even blink.

He’s barefoot these days, Louboutins beyond destroyed a long time ago. Squishy bits of flesh and rot, frozen, sharp slopes, and a mud-like blend of blood and who-know-what else… Again, he didn’t even blink.

Two identical demons, sinewy beings with reddish bodies and featureless faces, bowed and scattered away. They didn't say anything, halting their punishment and leaving them alone as per his express wishes. They were at the second place, technically first place, for demon tortures now that Mazikeen was gone.

“Dromos.” He spat out the name, eyeing the sorry creature with distaste.

“Come to finally kill me, your highness?”

Lucifer’s lip wobbled. His eyes always glow red these days. Dromos was focused on them with the one eye he still had, grinning.

His statement. He’d publicly executed them all when he’d came back here what felt-and probably was-centuries ago.

Not Dromos though. There was something inside of Lucifer telling him that it wasn’t the time to kill the deranged demon just yet. There was something missing. He sought out each visit he took into this rot in an attempt to find what he was looking for. Each visit, he was sorely disappointed and Dromos lived on.

“How are you today, my king?” The demon asked, all genuine concern, seemingly unaffected by his treatment, “Still missing your blonde human toy?”

The blade that Lucifer had been holding shattered as his grip clenched around the dark hilt. That wasn’t such a problem though.

The twin demons hurried back. Knives and blades and torture devices that humans could not even begin to dream of surrounded them. Dromos, for all his bravado, seemed to shrink in on himself.

“I shall do this one myself.” Lucifer declared.

The twin demons nodded, bowed, and vanished.

His devil face shimmered into view, pale skin burning away to be replaced by the monstrous visage that haunted Lucifer’s own dreams. It was a face he used to punish those deserving it and, at the moment, there wasn’t anyone who might have deserved it more than Dromos.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

  
“I think I have found it, my lord!” The demon sing-songed, “The perfect question to start our torture sessions!”

Lucifer didn’t give him the chance to reveal it.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

“How do you feel without her, your highness?”

“How do you feel without her, my lord?”

“How do you feel without her?”

“How do you feel without her?”

“How do you feel without her?”

**_*cries in Deckerstar*_ **

“ENOUGH!”

“H-how do you… feel… without her?”

Clearly, he had grown soft. His torture was not being as effective and that was something that Lucifer was going to remedy instantly.

Dromos was leering at him, remaining eye sparkling with mirth. The demon had always been an exceptional torturer, but did his expertise somehow make all sorts of torture ineffective on him? Perhaps he was just too far gone, the insanity that had taken hold of his mind being stronger than whatever punishment whatever remained of his body endured day after day.

That damn question though…

It was like a curse.

Lucifer did not understand it, but that question followed after him wherever he went. It didn’t matter what he was doing or where he was; that questions _always_ lingered in the back of his mind with the image of… of _her_.

He’d given up trying to get himself to stop thinking about her. Sometimes, Lucifer wondered if he’d give up trying to ignore how much that question bothered him.

The problem was that the question had an effect on him in the first place. It made no sense. He was the devil. He… He didn’t _feel_ things.

There was no Doctor Linda to guide him through solving this. No case to project the issue into. No humans to learn from. No her to…

He didn’t want to feel things. Lucifer remembered that eventually, everything inside would mute itself. It hurt a lot but it was better than feeling… emotions.

_Ugh._

He turned back to Dromos, trying to put on his meanest grin. Somehow, Lucifer was certain that it came out as more of a grimace instead.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

A lot of things changed, but a lot of things stayed the same.

His anger. His hopelessness. His feelings of loss. His pain. How much he missed her. How terribly he failed at trying not to think about her every moment that he existed.

That question.

That damned question.

A part of him wanted to avoid that certain pit for several thousand years to try and stop that question from echoing around in his head in some sort of infinite, maddening loop.

Of course, that only served to make him go more. Lucifer Morningstar was many things, but a weakling and a coward were not among them.

Dromos _never_ got bored. He never gave up or took a break until he was either delirious with pain or unconscious from it. Lucifer thought that he might utter that cursed statement in either of those cases too in some shared plan between the rogue demon and his Father to drive him insane.

The plan was working.

“Why?” He’d ask, sounding crazed to his own ears.

Dromos would never answer. He’d smile or laugh or scream. It was always deranged and frustrating though.

The whole thing was not a battle of wills. It was simple. He should either kill Dromos or man up and stop letting a string of words have such a profound effect on him. The torture could continue. He’d rule hell and do the one thing that he seemed to have been created for.

Everything was working in reverse though. The whole thing _was_ a battle and Lucifer was losing.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

He was on the top of what equated a mountain in hell, lying down and staring at nothing.

Staring at nothing had returned to being one of his favourite hobbies as of late. He didn’t get to do it too often, busy as he was with ruling hell.

The worst thing about it was that that accursed query still plagued his mind. It invaded his cherished staring-at-nothing time, somehow sounding louder and louder. It wouldn’t go away.

_How do you feel away from her? How do you feel when she’s gone? How do you feel without her? How do you feel now that she’s-_

Lucifer screamed, hands flying to his ears. He wreathed on the ground, long fingers digging into his hair and pulling at the strands. He ended up curled in a ball on the cold ground, shuddering with the magnitude of his mental and emotional anguish. He was running out of options, rapidly losing himself. Numbly, Lucifer wondered if he was finally reaching his long awaited breaking point.

Just how much was too much?

_How do you feel-_

He sobbed.

He was the devil and he was alone and he was sobbing on the bloody floor like some sort of pathetic excuse of a broken _human._

That didn’t get it to stop though.

During his time on earth, he’d learned that crying was good for one’s pain. It had never made sense to him. Lucifer had never been much of a crier. He’d always regarded the act as a sign of weakness.

Yet, here he was, sobbing his aching heart out and it wasn’t helping. It wasn’t like he thought that leaking optical fluids would somehow cure him like some sort of magic, like… like…

Like the Detective.

 _She_ would’ve known what to do.

He cried harder.

**_*cries in Deckerstar*_ **

Perhaps giving up was the answer. That was the one angle that Lucifer had always avoided like the plague.

He sat on his throne, as lonely and as deserted as ever, staring at nothing once again. No one could see him up here of course, but Lucifer didn’t care. He did not need another reason to be targetted. There would be no pitiful crying and no pathetic mental breakdowns.

To give up, in this scenario, would be to answer. A question’s purpose was served once it was answered, right?

But even hearing the question hurt. He couldn’t imagine voluntarily thinking about it much less attempting to answer it. 

But he had to.

He tried. Several times. None of what he came up with make sense. Everything still hurt. Lucifer was almost certain that his initially perceived solution was just a lie. Perhaps he had been lying to himself, trying to convince himself that he would find a way out.

He couldn’t give up though.

He…

It hurt. Being away from her _hurt_.

It wasn’t like the kind of hurt that Dromos was trying to inflict upon him with his stupid question. It was different. Much, much different. It was… deeper. Calmer. Slower.

It was an ache residing deep within his soul.

He was broken and breaking more so every passing minute away from her. He missed everything about her; her smile, her horrid choice of clothes, her wit, her awkwardness, her adorable laugh…

He missed her chastising him and rolling her eyes at his antics. He missed her shy grins and the confidence that she always carried herself with. He missed being around her. Their banter. The never-ending conversations. Their… everything.

Dromos wanted to torture him.

And it was working.

The memories hurt. Trying not to think about her had hurt much less. Lucifer never managed to do it for long, always needing to stop and rushing to bury himself in whatever business or task hell had to offer that time.

But he got better. His progress was painstakingly slow, having him convinced that it didn’t exist.

It was there though.

Slowly, he could almost smile when he thought of the sun making her hair glow. He could almost remember her beautiful deep blue eyes without physically flinching. Of course, he still felt like destroying something or possibly bursting into some sort of poignant fit, but he didn’t do either.

The question had a lot of answers. After all, Lucifer was slowly realizing that he felt a lot of things. They all blended together to mark his anguish, but he wasn’t just some walking blob of endless suffering anymore.

He was…

There was no word for it per se. Why would there be? Lucifer didn’t think that his Father had designed this sort of torment for anyone else.

But every time he paid Dromos a visit, he gave him as much words as he could manage.

Lucifer spat the words out, screaming and yelling them at times and whispering and stating them at other times.

It was, for the lack of a better word, therapeutic.

Perhaps this was hell’s version of therapy? Sometimes, Lucifer thought that most people had their versions of therapy as well as their coping mechanisms, healthy or otherwise. Demons were not different. Torture was theirs. 

While he believed in punishing wrong-doers, Lucifer had never…

Oh well, this could work.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

“Incomplete.” He whispered one day, landing gracefully, his wings almost lighting up the ominous darkness.

“What?” Dromos coughed, grinning, “How do you-”

“I already answered that.” Lucifer replied, grinning back.

A knife glinted in his hand. With one swift motion, he drew the blade along the demon’s neck. He watched the miserable wretch bleed out, choking on whatever blood his previous torture had allowed to remain in his body. The demons said nothing.

Lucifer continued watching, unperturbed. 

It was too merciful perhaps, but the King of Hell did not care. Dromos had long since outlived his purpose.

When it was done, Lucifer turned on his heel and flew away. He never looked back.

_***cries in Deckerstar*** _

He was still shattered on the inside.

Everyday was worse than the one preceding it. There never seemed to be any hope. Not without Maze to lighten up his days or trips topside to look forward to every once in a while.

He was the loneliest that he ever remembered himself being. He was the saddest and the most damaged too.

But he was still alive.

It hurt to think about, but he could see her in his mind’s eye. As perfect as ever. All smiles and cleverness and everything that made her his Detective.

It seemed unlikely, but he’d dream of going back to her. Of being in her arms. Of feeling her soft lips on his own and her smaller body pressed close to his. They were waking dreams, ones that haunted him any time he dared to close his eyes in the infernal realm.

But they were dreams.

He dreamed and he lived on and he _existed_. Existence was pain but it was better than nothingness, than the encompassing torment that was attempting to forget her.

Some days imagining being with her again killed him on the inside.

Other days, it was the only reason that he could think of to stay alive.

Lucifer was _incomplete_ without her. He supposed that a part of him would always search for, yearn for her, beg for her…

Whether or not any of his dreams would ever come true was another story entirely of course.

**Author's Note:**

> So...? Fix it?
> 
> Thank the wonderful Ywontthiswork for this awesome prompt. Anyone else, suggest any prompt that you would like to see in the comments. Letters L and onward.
> 
> Because I just have to:  
> Now, also, if you ever wanna hang out on twitter: https://twitter.com/NerdQueen777?s=09  
> Or Tumblr: https://sk-kasai-my-world.tumblr.com/


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